Well · Faith

I'm 58, I Teach Sunday School, and at 3 AM I Would Always Reach for My Phone

Seven years of waking at 3 AM, praying three words, ending up on Facebook and feeling like a bad Christian at breakfast. This spring I worked out why, and most of my nights don't look like that anymore.

By Carol M.

Reader contributor, Ohio

Published November 4, 2026

Listen to this article · 13 min

If you love Jesus and you wake up at 3 AM with your phone already in your hand, I want to tell you what I worked out this spring. I'm 58 and I've taught Sunday school for fourteen years, and nobody at church ever said it to me. It came out of a church parking lot and a comment somebody left under a video about the Bible.

I know those nights. You lie still so you don't wake him, your mind won't stop, and you pray three words before you're somewhere else. Then it's four o'clock, you've been on Facebook, and at breakfast you feel like a bad Christian.

More than 7,000 believers have what I have now. I read about it for most of a week before I ordered mine, because I've bought my share of things that were going to fix my nights. I will tell you why none of them did, and what my hand finds first now. I gave the old way seven years. I'd rather you didn't give it one more night.

3:12, and my hand was already on my phone

It's always 3 something. My eyes open like somebody said my name. Gary's breathing next to me, there's the glass of water on the nightstand, and across the room my Bible is on the dresser where I set it down last night. And my hand is already on my phone. I did not decide that. It's there.

Then my mind starts, and the anxiety with it. My son, who's been let go twice. My sister Pam's scan on the 14th. The furnace. I know it is in God's hands and I can't seem to let it go.

So I pray the way I always do. Lord? I need you. I can't sleep. Jesus, please, let me get back to sleep. And three words in I'm at Pam's appointment, then I'm at the furnace, and the screen's lit up in my hand and I'm on Facebook. A woman I went to high school with got a new kitchen. Somebody's dog. On the better nights I'd pray, feel some peace, and then scroll until four.

My husband asked me once who I was talking to at three in the morning. I wasn't talking to anybody. I was lying right next to him on Facebook with the sound off.

Seven years of that, since the fall my son moved out. Once a month, then once a week, then most nights.

The tired wasn't the worst of it. The worst was what I thought about myself at breakfast. I teach fifth grade girls that Jesus is enough, and there I was at 3 AM with Facebook. Under an old video about anxiety and faith, somebody had written a line I took a screenshot of, because it was me:

"I always thought Anxiety/depression was a Sign of a Lack of Faith"

If I trusted Him enough, I wouldn't be lying there anxious with a phone in my face. Lord, forgive me. I did not know what else to think.

What I tried, and why none of it lasted

• A Bible app, three of them. I had to open the phone to open the app, and Facebook was on the same screen with a little red number on it.
• A verse card propped by my water glass, Isaiah 26:3. After a week I didn't see it anymore, and it went in the drawer.
• The phone on the dresser. Four nights. Then my son called at one in the morning and I couldn't get to it in time, and it came back to the nightstand.
• Just pray. I did, I do. The anxiety wouldn't let my mind hold still past the first sentence.

Nothing held. In March I wrote one line in my journal that I've never shown anybody: "I don't think I know how to pray anymore."

After that I went looking, at 3 AM, on the same phone, which I know. I read the comments under the videos about anxiety and the Bible, because that's where the real people are, and there were so many of us.

Under those videos, other people had written:

• I can’t sleep, I have anxiety. I feel alone. I pray to God to calm my heart and take away my anxiety. Please hear me God.
• i know most of these verses, and i cry almost every day because im trying to trust the Lord my God & it's just been so hard
• My phone actually gives me an absolute panic when I go to bed at night. I don't want that anymore.
• I have been doing verse mapping at night which is when i tend to doomscroll the most.

Two more stayed with me. One person wrote, "God literally showed me this when I opened my phone." That's true for me too, and some of the best things I've heard from the Lord came through that phone at 3 AM. Another wrote, "a few free minutes, I would always reach for my phone." Always reach. Yes.

And one made me laugh. Somebody keeps a little New Testament the size of a phone in a back pocket, and wrote, "I'll reach for my phone and find a bible instead." Isn't that cute, I thought. I'm 58 and I sleep in a nightgown. I do not have a back pocket.

What the widow in my class said in the parking lot

There's a widow in my Sunday school class. She's 61, her husband passed four years ago, and she sits by the window. One Sunday in April she walked out to the parking lot with me, and I don't know why, but I asked her if she ever sleeps.

"Oh, honey," she said. "I still pick up my phone. I just don't start with Facebook anymore."

She touched the little wooden tag on the black cord over her blouse and got in her car. That was it. I thought about it all week.

Wednesday night it was 3 something again, and my hand was on the phone before my eyes were all the way open, and I thought, there it goes. I did not send it. It's gone to that phone every night for seven years, and it gets there before I'm awake enough to pray. Then whatever's on the phone first gets me, and what's first is Facebook.

I do not love Facebook more than Jesus. Lord knows I don't. My hand just gets there before I do.

Two summers ago Gary redid our kitchen and moved the silverware to the drawer by the sink. For months I opened the old drawer every time I wanted a spoon, the one with the dish towels in it. I never decided to. My hand went where it had always gone.

Everything I'd tried asked my hand to go somewhere new, and at 3 AM my hand was not going anywhere new.

What seven years of it cost me

Somebody up there wrote I feel alone. I was lying next to my husband and I felt alone. I taught girls to pray on four hours of sleep and a chest full of anxiety. When Pam called after her scan to ask me to pray, I said of course, and I did, for about a sentence, and then I was reading about somebody's dog.

My hand just gets there before I do.

What scared me most was that I'd started to stop expecting Him at 3 AM at all. Year eight, year nine, and I'd have stopped noticing. That is the part I wouldn't wish on you.

Spoons in the old drawer

You know what finally fixed the kitchen? I never did teach my hand the new drawer. Gary put a few spoons back in the old one. My hand opens it and there's a spoon.

That's what the widow meant. My hand's going to reach for that phone at 3 AM, so I quit fighting the reach and changed what it finds first. Reach for the phone and find His Word.

For me it had to be right there in the dark, because I'm not getting up and turning on a light and waking Gary. It had to read to me, because at 3 AM my mind won't hold still for a page. And it had to come before Facebook. One person wrote, "Jesus gave us His peace and it's not in our phones." Another wrote, "Not AT peace, HIS peace." That's what I wanted, and I'd stopped asking for it.

Nothing I owned did that. My Bible needs a lamp. The app sits behind Facebook. The card never said a word.

What was on that black cord

The next Sunday I found her by her car and asked what she'd meant. She smiled and held up what was on her cord, a little tag of carved wood with a cross cut into it. She'd worn it over her blouse for months. Her granddaughter bought it for her.

She took her phone out of her purse and held it to the wood, and that day's verse came up on her screen, written out. Then it read it to us out loud, right there by her car.

I stood in the church parking lot and cried, and all I could say was thank you, Jesus.

She wears it to bed. When she wakes up her hand still goes to her phone like it always did, and the first thing she does with the phone is hold it to the cross. So the first thing she hears is Him. If she wants Facebook after that, fine, but most nights by then she doesn't.

They carve each one by hand, and the grain is different on every one. Hers is darker than mine. They pray over each one before it ships, and every order comes with a 60-Day Promise. There's no app. It's the same verse for all of us on a given day, so now she texts me in the morning, "Did you hear yours?"

I asked her what somebody online had asked, "do you worship your cross like you worship the lord ?" She said, "It's wood, Carol. I pray to Him. It's like my wedding ring." I said I don't wear much jewelry, and she said it goes under your nightgown. I said I'm not good with phones. She said you hold the phone there and that is all there is to it.

It will not pray for you. The first week I had mine, some nights I still ended up on Facebook afterward. By week two my hand went to the phone, the phone went to the cross, and most nights I never opened anything else.

If you sleep through the night, you don't need this. If you want something pretty to wear to church, there are fancier crosses. Mine is for 3 AM, for the ones of us who are up and out of things to try.

It's called the Promise Cross.

See the cross she showed me →

Three people who reached for theirs before I did

Three who wear one

What my nights are like now

Last Wednesday it was 3:12 again. My eyes opened the way they do, my mind went straight to Pam, whose next scan is in October, and I felt the anxiety come up in my chest like always.

Before

Now

My hand went to the phone the way it has for seven years, and then to the tag at my neck. The wood was warm from me. I held the phone to it with the sound way down and close to my ear, and a voice read me Psalm 121:3, "He who keeps you will not slumber."

A close-up of the tag on its black cord, held to a phone.

My hand still reaches for the phone at 3 AM, and it finds Jesus first.

I did not open anything else. I lay there in the dark and prayed for Pam by name, the whole prayer this time, then for my son, and somewhere in the middle I fell asleep.

At breakfast Gary said, "You were talking in the night." I told him I was praying, and he said, "I know, I heard you say Pam's name."

That's what my nights are now. My hand still reaches for the phone at 3 AM, and it finds Jesus first.

What it costs, and why I'd pay it again

Someone carved mine by hand from wood that doesn't look like anybody else's, and someone prayed over it before it went in the box. The crosses on the spinner rack at the pharmacy were never made like that.

This run is the one shipping now. Every cross is hand-carved and prayed over before it leaves, so a run only goes so far. When it sells out, Buy One, Gift One Free pauses until the next run on Monday, November 9 at 9:00 AM Eastern.

Before I ordered, I put it next to everything I'd tried.

	In my hand in the dark	Reads to me	His Word before Facebook	A new verse each day
My Bible on the dresser	No	No	No	If I pick one
A Bible app	Yes	Some do	No	Yes
A verse card	Yes	No	Yes	No
Rain and sleep sounds	Yes	No	No	No
The Promise Cross	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Hallow, the prayer app, is $69.99 a year. Faithbox is $34.95 a month, every month. Christian counseling runs $80 to $225 a session. None of those are in my hand at 3:12 in the morning. Two of these crosses together come in under sixty-five dollars, one time.

If you close this and tonight goes like last night, you've lost one night. I lost about two thousand of them, and I'd give a lot to have some back.

And the second cross. Mine went to Pam. She texts me sometimes at 3 AM now, the verse reference and a heart. You already know who yours is for. She's the one you pray for when you can't sleep, and she's probably awake too.

Get the pair → Buy One, Gift One Free

The questions I had at the kitchen table

If you're awake tonight, I'll be praying for you, and please keep me in yours. In Jesus' name, Amen.Carol M., Ohio

Find Him first tonight → Buy One, Gift One Free